Field of the Disclosure
Aspects of the present disclosure relate to methods of manufacturing two dimensional matrix array backing interconnect assemblies formed of stacked high density interconnect printed circuit boards and flexible printed circuits that can be interconnected with acoustic materials to form two dimensional ultrasonic transducer arrays.
Description of Related Art
Ultrasonic imaging has been utilized for a number of years in the medical field. Linear and curvilinear ultrasonic transducers are used to produce visual images of features within a patient's body. Such ultrasonic imaging transducers are also used in other fields.
Typically, an ultrasonic transducer for producing visual images of features inside the body includes an array of ultrasonic elements which may be driven by a desired excitation and/or receive ultrasonic reflections obtained from various features of interest.
As technology progresses, there has been an increasing need to produce ultrasonic images having enhanced resolution. There is also, a desire to produce ultrasonic transducers producing not only better images, but exhibiting greater reliability and ease of manufacture.
In a conventional ultrasonic transducer array, a piezoelectric assembly is fastened to a backing, and the piezoelectric assembly is then cut transversely into individual electrode elements extending along a longitudinal direction.
One of the limiting factors in manufacturing such piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers is that, as transducer elements size decreases, there is an increased difficulty in constructing complex wiring that is needed for ultrasonic transducers which can have hundreds of piezoelectric elements.